Straw came, then more straw came and then, perhaps, more straw had come. The last grains of his gruel were lapped up by his tongue as it methodically pursued them around the bottom of his food bowl. Satisfied with his accomplishment of so far ingesting every morsel of nourishment from his meal he began to suck on the bone that he had saved for last. His children again — or was it for the first time? — paraded before his closed eyes. He had planned to do something that may well endanger Titus, he was sure; it had been to do with Tryphaena. Yes, it was Nero; somehow he was helping Nero’s cause, that’s why he was here. Yes, that was it. It was because of Titus’ friendship with Britannicus that he would be in danger if … but he was sure that he had thought of the way to protect him before he had embarked on the road that led to this moment.
The light again.
But he had not quite finished.
He opened his eyes and placed the inedible remnants of the bone onto a heap of similar fragments in the corner, now just visible in the dim but growing light of the approaching torch; he noted with half-felt curiosity that it was quite big. Had the pile always been like that? No, it could not have been; it must have grown and he must have fed it with other bones.
He stared at the pile; so many bones.
A wave of panic hit him.
How many?
He did not want to count.
He felt his chest tighten as he stared at the physical evidence of the length of this one moment. He lashed out at the pile with both hands, smashing it apart, spreading the bones all across the floor of the cell; scattering them amongst the muck so that they could not be counted.
He needed to breathe; he tried to inhale but could not.
And then he heard himself: he was screaming.
It was uncontrolled and from his very core; from deep within a consciousness that had been buried deep within the deepest bowels of the first foundations made by man. It was fuelled by the millennia of misery that shrouded this pit and sucked what life was left in the barely living incarcerated within it.
It was raw.
But it was also fed by shouts from outside his cell; shouts of anger. The gaoler was shouting at him and he was screaming back. He had not had communication with anyone in the whole moment that he had been in this darkness; in the time that it had taken that pile of bones to appear. No one had spoken to him since Izates and even then he had not responded because he had shut the world off to preserve his peace. But now he was being shouted at and now he was screaming back. Now he was having a conversation, he was interacting with another human being, he was screaming and the gaoler was shouting at him for doing so: the gaoler was acknowledging his existence.
So Vespasian screamed some more.
And as he screamed he laughed. He lifted his face to the ceiling and screamed and laughed and he did not want to stop because he knew that when he did there would be only one friend to comfort him.
And that friend was false because his name was despair.
And so he carried on screaming; even as the door opened; even as his arms were pinioned; even as the first blows slammed into his shrunken stomach and rough hands pulled back his hair. He screamed as vomit surged in his gorge and then screamed again once it had sprayed all over his interlocutors — for they were still shouting at him and he was still pleased with the attention. He wanted this conversation to go on, even as his head filled with agony as his slop bucket crunched down on it, the contents drenching him. And then he screamed as he saw the floor rushing towards him as if it were a friend anxious to hold him in its embrace after a long absence. He screamed as he kissed it and felt the friend’s arms about him and then he screamed a scream that he knew could be heard by nobody else; it was a scream that echoed around his head alone. It was a scream that could be part of no conversation because it was a scream that was reserved only for solitary use.
It was the scream of despair.
CHAPTER XIII
Despite all his care to keep the door to the world outside locked, Vespasian now found himself with an unwelcome companion who resisted all attempts at eviction. No longer could Vespasian deny to himself the existence of the outside world and no longer could he not yearn to see it, feel it, exist in it. After all, he had almost escaped back to it after the earthquake; yet then he had said not a word to anyone but now, with the gaolers, he had tried to communicate; now he could no longer keep himself hidden lost in an inner tranquillity.
And so his mind turned to the only two subjects that had any relevance: escape and revenge.
And yet, the second could not happen without the first and escape seemed impossible; there would be no more fortuitous earthquakes. He was never let out of his cell, which had no window, only a door and that was solid apart from the grille. Only the grille was ever opened and although it was big enough for him to squeeze through, the time it would take him to do it would be more than ample for the gaolers to incapacitate him; there could be no surprise rush through the grille. Therefore it had to be the door; the gaolers had opened it when he had had his screaming fit, so could he replicate that and overpower them as they came in to restrain him? His new companion provided the answer to that and showed him his weakened limbs and shrunken belly. But Vespasian refused to be driven down by despair, so, rather than retreat into a corner, cowed by his false friend, he fell to exercise, working his muscles that had been unused for who knew how long and planning the hideous ways in which he would inflict injury on Paelignus and Radamistus. Rather than sit or squat on his blanket he began to pace the cell like a wild beast before release into the arena; he would intersperse his walking with bouts of gymnastics, stretching and working his neck, arms and legs, doing his best to ignore the mockery of the companion who watched his every move.
Gradually his body began to harden but his belly remained shrunken as the rigours of his regime far exceeded the nutrition of his diet and he realised that he would not be able to gain sufficient strength to overpower two so obviously well-fed men. And for a while he fell back into the arms of despair.
For a whole period between two straw deliveries he gave up the fight, lying on the blanket with his friend, until he remembered that he possessed one thing that the gaolers did not: intelligence.
And so he began to study them every time they came down the green-slimed steps. The one who held the torch was bald and bearded with a bull neck and hands the size of a loaf of bread. His mate was slighter with unkempt hair and beard and looked as if he was struggling under the weight of the sack of loaves and the pail of gruel; Vespasian concluded that he must be a slave as otherwise it made no sense that the smaller, weaker man should be doing the hardest work. That gave him his first reason to allow himself a morsel of hope: if the smaller man was a slave, he might hate his master and would perhaps do nothing to defend him if he were to be attacked. But then he remembered how the smaller man had pinioned his arms; the grip had been that of a man enthusiastic about committing violence. The hope died but he carried on studying their routine and it was always the same — until one visit, when everything changed.
It took Vespasian a while to realise that the slave was different as the new man had the same build as the last and similarly unkempt hair and beard. But, as the pair progressed down the corridor, emptying slop buckets and distributing food, Vespasian noticed that the slave was doing something that he did not normally do: he was looking closely through the grille at each inmate; it was then that Vespasian saw that he was new. As they came closer, Vespasian studied the new man for signs that he might be weaker than the previous slave and he looked for clues as to the man’s relationship with his master. But the slave gave nothing away. At each door he would put down his sack and pail of gruel, then, once the gaoler had unbolted the grille and opened it, he would take the slop bucket, empty it into the open sewer and hand it back. It was as he passed the bucket back through the grille that the man bent and looked closely at the occupant. Then he took the jug and walked back to the butt of water at the foot of the steps to fill it. Having passed the jug back he received the wooden bowl, ladled gruel into it, gave it back and passed a loaf through before his master swung back the grille and bolted it.